Programme

Featuring Majk Stokes and Beth Clarke: now in its sixth year, "Make Tea, Not War" returns to bookend the Venue 40 Fringe programme.

With gentle humour, and a strong environmental conscience, Majk performs some new songs and poems along with highlights from his show "One more cup of coffee, and then we'll save the world".

Having played on the Scottish traditional music scene for many years, Beth combines lively fiddle tunes with her own touching and gently humourous songs, played on a mandola and rooted in her Edinburgh home and its environs.

Recently discovered letters from a war-time wife and mother to her soldier husband offer rare insights into civilian life in WW2. Dramatizing her mother’s words with sensitivity and understanding Polly Pattison relives the humour and pathos of those dark days.

Open lock to the Dead Man’s knock! Fly, bolt and bar and band! Nor move, nor swerve, joint, muscle, or nerve at the spell of the Dead Man’s hand! Newbury Youth Theatre present the tall tale of Wizard John Palmer, who exorcised a Boxford cottage, silenced the bells of Welford and stopped the curse of a dead man’s hand in Winterbourne.

With a decade at the Fringe and a host of sell-out shows already under their kilt-belts, the duo return with a selection from The Corries’ songbook. Inspired by a love of The Corries, Douglas Kay and Martin Philip sing, play and banter their way through an entertaining hour of traditional Scottish and comic songs

Using improvisatory acting informed by the Lecoq technique, Poulenc’s sensual music will be brought vividly to life, in an opera here two lovers are attached through a telephone cord, each totally alone, yet talking, without seeing or touching each other.

Ad Infinitum regular Deborah Pugh (Translunar Paradise) plays Susan, an adoptee with learning difficulties, trapped by rising floods as Storm David batters. Staged on a fragment of staircase, inspired by Susan’s favourite story, Rapunzel, it is a dark contemporary fairy story for adults with elements of both realism and the gothic.

The poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the 19th century is an almost cinema-topographic text among English romantic poetry of the time. Naturally, it lends itself to theatre. To this endeavour the Piccolo Teatro Nexonnais has given precedence to the trestle table technique, Theatre du Tréteau, thus giving a lively and incisive evocation of the poem

Are you fork-friendly? Can you safely operate a butter knife? Do you have spoon-sense? If you use cutlery, or know someone who does, then this deadly serious cutlery safety training session is for you.

‘Forking good health and safety-based comedy has tears rolling down cheeks’ **** (TheWeeReview.com).

‘This is a must-see show for anyone with a strong sense of the ridiculous’ **** (SGFringe.com)

Exhibition of panels showing the variety of experiences endured by Conscientious Objectors to World War One.

Were they shot at dawn, in the trenches, imprisoned, or in the Navy? Come and discover if they had an ‘after-life’.

In a week when we recall the dropping of the deadly bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki come and learn the ancient art of Origami. Make a beautiful paper crane and help create a staggering exhibition of 140,000 Origami cranes for a prominent Edinburgh venue.

Alongside this workshop there will be the chance to make a small (A6) notebook using a Japanese stab binding

Join us for a time of quiet in the peace of the Quaker Meeting Room. No singing, no dancing, no drama, just an hour of quiet to contemplate the future of the world or silently review the last show you saw. Quakers traditionally worship in silence but there is no need to become a Quaker to join us.

Art is witness of our experiences; it can also be worship of the most imaginative kind.
This event, which is both active and reflective, comprises a visit to the beach at Cramond (on public transport) to gather natural and human-made objects as source material, an indoor workshop to make pieces of art, photograph, draw or write, and a curated exhibition at the Quaker Meeting House to share our findings.
We will witness our thoughts and feelings too.

The festival within the Festival invites you to enjoy fifteen varied afternoon sessions of stimulating conversation, readings and debate covering topics from George Orwell to Eduardo Paolozzi, the outer reaches of St Kilda to the inner workings of Glasgow, the science behind the standing stones to the political landscape of Scotland as she stands in the aftermath of Brexit.

Enjoy the vegetarian and vegan delights of the Eating House at the Meeting House.

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